So in the months of March and April, I went down the rabbit hole of "reading" Agatha Christie novels. "Reading" in quotes because I actually listened to the audio books. This was a long pending thing (atleast I should make use of my unemployed-stuck-at-home-with-no-escaping-this-hell situation) which I finally did somehow. The thing that lead to this was the series "Agatha Christie's Seven Dials" series. And the many different "who dunnit" movies which would always remind me of the fact that I hadn't read any of Agatha Christie's books though I love to read detective stories. I had listened to the "Murder on the Orient Express" audio book sometime ago and had liked it. Also I did suffer from the fomo of not knowing the character of Hercule Poirot. So the netflix series did stir up my fomo and made me listen to the numerous novels written by Agatha Christie. Though I started with "The mysterious affair at Styles" and then listened to "The Murder at the Vicarage" I decided that I should not listen to Poirot and Miss Marple in a mixed fashion. So I searched for the books so that I could find the chronological order of publishing and then started listening to the audio books accordingly.
"https://www.agathachristie.com/en" lists all the books by her (and also the new books written by other people - I had read about others writing stories of these characters long ago). I decided to stick to the books written by Agatha Christie herself. So I listened to all the Poirot novels first (these are the novels with the maximum number of books) and then moved on to Miss Marple novels and then Tommy and Tuppence novels. And this was quite something. Each audiobook usually is about 6-7 hours long. So this was the audio book version of binging. i.e one book per day. Had I read them I wouldn't have finished them this soon.
And "reading" those books were like pattern identification. Many of her novels are similar in structure. Money features as a main motive in many of these books, there are several characters assembled at a certain location when something happens. Infact this feels like the darker/morbid version of a cozy Hindi family movie. (Also the reason why we love the original "Knives Out" movie.) There is no doubt that Agatha Christie was the queen of a certain genre of mystery thrillers. The binging aspect certifies that. And in many cases she portrays uncomfortable human emotions accurately. But as a modern millenial woman, there are certain things which I definitely cannot agree with, in her novels. I even asked google, google also agrees with me that such aspects have been pointed out by other readers too. So here are some things that struck me as a modern millenial female reader of Agatha Christie books.
1) We are living in the remnants of colonialism. As a millenial Indian woman "reading" these books in 2026, I could not help noticing that the "morality" of Indians in 2026 is not at all different from that of English characters written in the early part of the 20th century. Like women looked down as nobodies, men controlling women's lives and bodies, women not allowed to go freely out of home and work. Independent women being called names, the list goes on. This made me look the things I had to endure in my life as an Indian woman in a different light. I started wondering if we Indians are still living in colonial era - keeping the "morals" imposed upon us during colonial days? Even after 78 years of independence? So colonialism still has its effect on the quality of life of a woman born years after India became independent. People of my country cannot shake off the remnants of these colonialist "values" even after all these decades? Caste and other discriminatory things already existed in India. Add classism and morals like "kula sthree/gentlewoman" (basically a woman who obeys patriarchy :/) to these already existing vile, and we get everything that make the life of a woman miserable right from her birth.
I was made to wonder whether colonialism might have played a part in imparting some of the problematic "values" belonging to a very old era to many Indians who might have blindly imbibed those and even transformed them to suit the Indian local settings. (Or it might have been the other way around also.) In any case I was reminded of the stupid ideals people still cling to - like honor killing, "respectability", denial of a woman's agency and freedom. In addition to these many of these novels have racial slurs we cannot ignore in the modern days (and those were not altered in the audiobook versions that were definitely read after the abolition of apartheid in most of the world). There are many racist remarks which definitely are triggering and unacceptable to a modern millenial.
Then there is the over promotion of the "family" establishment. Many women characters sitting at home are either good wives or mothers (if they are not criminals).
Men who control everyone around them. Every Indian kid has gone through this. Women endure this as girls and are forced to endure this as grown women. Boys endure this and grow up to be men who control others in their lives. Men who kill their wives for money. Agatha Christie did get these characters spot on. It is a known fact that intimate partner violence is one of the most common form of violence a woman is subject to. It was so in the 20th century, it still is in 21st century. (Doesn't that make you marvel at how patriarchy operates successfully in passing on rotten ideals from millenia to millenia?)
2) Normalisation of toxic relationships : This is a very important aspect of Agatha Christie novels, a millenial woman with awareness cannot igore. There is Miss Marple novel named "Nemesis". Half way through it, I stopped listening to it, because it normalised sexual assault as if it is nothing at all! What on Earth? The author required the readers - rather preached to her readers that sexual assault is a forgivable crime. That was horrible. And the guy who did this crime had to be exonerated of some other suspected crimes so he could live freely?! Wow! That book was so triggering that I could not continue. Then I googled the story and read that a queer woman was the murderer? This books is the worst of her novels in my opinion. First of all justifying a certain crime and then making a queer person a criminal. This book is really really bad and unacceptable to anybody who lives in the modern world. I don't know why this book is still even in circulation. :/
Then the toxic relationship where a potential "love interest" strangles a woman at first sight! What the hell? And she is so madly in love with this guy that she finds someone choking her exiting? What illogical substance was the author smoking while writing such things? The same guy "professes his love" to the woman by saying that he will beat her black and blue if she ever thinks about going off with someone else! This book happens to be "The Man in the Brown Suit" a book in which it is the seemingly independent heroine who does these stupid things. The moment I heard these dialogues I was reminded of the SNL sketch about the actresses round table and the old actress played by Kate McKinnon normalising crimes against women and the younger generation getting uncomfortable.
As a millenial I would think that the women of my generation and younger would be wiser and lesser prone to these things. But the news we read point to the fact that even in a modern, world with so much awareness women are conditioned to believe that someone who physically assaults her can be forgiven because he "loves" her and will "protect" her.
3) Justification of relationships with large age gap : In many of these books, very young women, basically kids are shown to be married to men who are much older than them. It is treated as if this is normal and that men who are even above 60 are allowed by some magic intervention to have young wives. :/ In the context of the novels I may console myself that these are the morals from a bygone era. But what about the real life instances that are still prevalent in our 21st century society?
In many cases movies justify a 40+ year old hero romancing a ~22 year old heroine (two such movies are "Sarvam Maya" and "Vishwanath & Sons"; earlier the movies wouldn't justify anything, but just cast, now they cast and justify with plot points too). And real life people vetting relations with such age gap and imbalance of power that, you as a modern woman start to wonder which dark era you are living in. Real world examples may even include cases where a college teacher proposes to a possibly underage student and the gharwaale (including the girl's parents) arranging a marriage, not realizing that this is exploitation and abuse of power on the part of the teacher who holds the internal marks of the teenage student. It definitely tells something about a man who goes after women who are much much younger than him. And should tell even more about this man when the woman happens to be in a position where she is a budding artist or a young student or a struggling actress and the older man is her superior/teacher or simply somebody who is a senior in the same field (say movie industry) and holds power and has more money than the young woman. This is not love, this is exploitation.
By no argument can one justify the predatory nature of such relationships. In the world of Agatha Christie novels these are normal. And the sad reality is that in the age of internet where one can google if such relations are predatory or not, people just blindly arrange and give blessing for the union of a potential predator with someone who has just crossed teenage. :|
In addition to these, google tells me that some of the references which are used to mention characters indicate internalised misogyny. That is very true. The words used in the books to indicate mental illness are not very respectful either. And there is definitely a prejudice against queer people.
All in all getting familiar with the works of Agatha Christie made me reflect upon my current life circumstances. Being stuck at home in a place where people still care about "kula sthree" and cannot think scientifically or about anything other than inheritance (don't tell me that people in small towns aren't bothered about inheritances) or gossip about independent women (especially single women who), I could not shake off the realisation that we are still living backwardly with the ideals of the past that other parts of the world have abandoned. And how better my life as a millenial woman would have been, had such ideals not been imposed by the stupid people of the society. One can read Agatha Christie novels and do some detective thinking to solve the cases. But never take morals and ideals from her novels because they are really problematic.
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PS : I have to mention the names of the Agatha Christie novels I like, out of the ones I have finished:
2) Murder on the Orient Express
3) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - this one is very interesting since I was wondering if a certain kind of narrator was there in her novels and here it was.
